Can't Life Always Be a Beach?

So the week at the beachhouse with twenty-five other women writers (and Roger)? Totally wonderful. The best thing I've done for my writing career to date. My hero, The Cherry, was charming and fabulous, just as reported. Each of the teachers gave out such good information that I've rushed right home to play with. Plans for next year are a go.

In short, there are no superlatives strong enough to say how fun and beneficial last week was. Who knew you could throw so many women together in a house and have them all come out friends? In the past, this has not been my experience. But last week, if three of us were gathered together, you could be sure there was a murder being plotted or some poor guy was being roped into fatherhood with his dead brother's baby. Fashion choices for our heroines were paramount, while our own clothes ran the gamut from cherry print pajama pants (me) to cute, girly tops with jeans (Allison) to lovely, long beach-walking skirts (Jenny). Food was good, margaritas were plentiful, Diet Coke flowed morning, noon, and night, and chocolate candy kept our blood sugar stabilized throughout the afternoon sessions. It was heaven.

At the end of the week, I returned home into a cloud of testosterone produced by the men in my household. Dog hair and dirt clots and ketchup stains, oh my. Halloween II on DVD, marching band competition, hot peppers, bicycle grease, skateboard tape, loud music, no conversation, hair products, dirty socks under my pillow (from Marlo, no less, the estrogen bond doesn't extend to dachshunds), hot dogs and tater tots, burping skills, Japanese movies, and video game stories.

The mild depression only grew with my return to my new housecleaning job. Bedmaking, vacuuming, streakless shines on mirrors, squeegie on shower doors, dust corralled and microwaves scrubbed clean. Suddenly, instead of simpatico storylines and genre-bending plot twists, my back ached, my feet hurt, and my fingernails began to break. Too tired to watch prime time and too addled to write, I started to wonder if I would ever snap out of the non-writer-crowd doldrums.

But last night as I was going up to bed at 9 pm, I heard guitars and poked my head into Rich's recording room. He and Kev were playing together, singing in harmony one of my favorite Concrete Blond songs, "The Darkening of the Light." My heart flipped over and I was at peace, back in Wife and MommyVille, and happy to be here.

Maybe it is possible to have everything. Each in its own time.